Deep South
an excerpt

It was a long way. Eventually I gave up running, because it wasn’t much more than a stumbling, erratic walk, anyway, and only put me in danger of breaking my neck. Anyway, I had only a rough idea where I was going, and trying to concentrate on keeping my feet as I ran would probably send me round and round in circles. So I settled down to a rapid walk, trying to keep myself pointing in the right direction, trusting to a couple of stars that I figured were hanging in the right part of the sky.

I got lucky, because those stars were pretty much where I figured they were. I cam stumbling out of the fields onto the track Rufus and I had followed that afternoon. I turned left, jogging now, heading the same way we’d rode, towards Cooper’s Flats. As I jogged, I kept my ear’s sharp for sounds of other people on the road. But it was quiet, so far.

The darkness of the night was intensified by the darkness of the higher scrub around Wendell’s place. I was close now. I took myself off the track, cutting through the scrub, moving upwards towards the small knoll where the cabin stood. I crouched in the dark. There was a light glimmering weekly at one window. I skirted around the edge of the overgrown clearing, circling to the left. There weren’t any other lights on. The place was quiet. I broke cover, and padded across the open ground to the cabin wall. I pressed up against it, listening. I didn’t hear any sound. I moved cautiously around to the front, where the weak light glowed. Very slowly, probing with feet to avoid any clutter on the ground by the front door, I crept up to the window, and peeked in.

Anson Wendell was slumped forward on a rough wooden table, the surface of which was pitted and scarred through years of careless use. A dark liquid had spilled across it, forming a pool that dribbled onto the floor. For a moment, I thought it was blood, but its source was an overturned bottle by his head. He’d obviously been imbibing his moonshine that night, and hadn’t lied about it’s potency.

I tried the door. It opened to my touch. I edged in to the room where Wendell sprawled, oblivious. I inched over to the lamp and picked it up. I looked about, found a ragged cloth that I draped over it, darkening the room. Then I stood for a few minutes, listening for sounds elsewhere in the house. Wendell was breathing heavily, the wheezing inhalation and exhalations of the inebriated. I could hear someone else snoring in a room further towards the back of the house

With the hooded lamp in hand, I groped along the wall to the doorway that lead to the back of the house, guided by that blessed snoring. I could discern the doorway only as a dark rectangle in a dark gray. I eased myself into that darkness, the lamp giving hardly any light, only sufficient to destroy my night vision, but not enough to compensate for that loss.

A board in the hallway creaked under my foot. The snoring, now sourced to a room to my left, stopped for a moment, and I caught my breath and froze. The snorer emitted a low moan, then the snoring resumed. After a minute or so, I moved again, groping for the doorway to the left, where the snorer slept. I felt my fingers brush off the wall into space. I turned into the doorway, pulled back the cloth from the lamp to spill some light over the room.

Two figures lay in on a pallet on the floor – two teenage girls, asleep, one of the snoring, the other curled on her side, face obscured by her arms which were drawn up around her head, as if accustomed to blocking out her bedmate’s noise. I dropped the cloth back over the lamp, stepped back into the hall.

There were two doorways further down the hall, opposite each other. The one on the left had a door, the one on the right was just an entrance way. I followed a hunch and went for the door. The knob turned under my hand, and the door opened, but the hinges groaned as the door opened.
Whoever was sleeping in there was waked by the noise. There was a sharp inhalation of breath, and a creak as someone sat up in the dark.

“Anson?” said a voice. It was her. I stepped through the door and closed it behind me. I spoke low and forcefully.

“Don’t make a sound. You’re husband’s asleep in front, your daughters as fine, if you want them to stay that way, don’t cry out, don’t be a full.”

The unseen sleeper drew in a sharp breath and strangled a cry of fright. I pulled the rag off the lamp, which light up the room dimly, but well enough for me to see Bella Sorenson sitting up in her bed, wearing a white slip, eyes wide with fright. She saw me and gasped again.

“Dea’ God, why are you here?” she gasped, keeping her wits about her enough to keep her voice down low.

I grinned cruelly. “Did you think something might have happened to me that might mean you wouldn’t be seeing me again?” I stepped close to the bed. She shrank back from me.

“I don’t know what you meaning. I went to the boathouse after I finished, you weren’t there,, I figured you were gone.”

“I was gone, alright, I was running for my life from two hoodlums someone set on my tale. Who did you tell about me.”

Her eyes grew wide again. “I didn’t tell no-one! I went straight back to my work. I didn’t say to no-one where you were. The only other fella who knew was Norris, the butler, who you told to go fetch me. I swear it.”

The look of fear and confusion in her eyes looked convincing. I figured confirmation wouldn’t be long in coming, anyway.

“Okay, listen,” I said. “You’re might be in trouble here. After I spoke to you, someone sent two men to kill me. If it wasn’t you, it must have been someone who watched me from the house, saw where I went. I managed to get away from them, maybe killed one of them, I don’t know. But once whoever sent them for me has time to organise themselves, they’ll figure out if they haven’t got me the next best thing is to get you, and they’ll be down here soon enough.”

Her eyes widened with fear.

“You need to get your family away from here, somewhere safe. Tonight. Tomorrow if you can, you need to get out of the county, drop out of sight. Whoever tried to have me killed to night had Rusty Mains killed. Had a white woman killed last night. They won’t think twice about killing you and your family and burning this place down.”

She nodded her startlement and fear gone, replaced by the recognition of the need for action. I grabbed her arm. “But quickly, what the Hell was Rusty doing here to get himself killed? How do you fit in?”

She swung herself out of bed, grabbing a gown that hung on a peg in the wall. “Have you ever heard of the American Negro Labor Congress, Mr Callaghan?” I shook my head.

She looked at me, curiously. ”You aren’t in the party, are you?” Again, I shook my head.

“The ANLC was set up to guide the negro into the Communist Party of America. We see the injustice of the black man’s position, and the tryranny imposed on him by white laws and white justice. And we see how the white bosses hold onto their power and land by telling the poor whites that there’s someone lower than themselves, and that someone’s any Negro. Because as long as the white trash got someone to look down on, they ain’t going to look up at who really got the power. So we know no congress or senate going to help the black man until the black man is there is the congress, in the senate. And he only going to do that with the Communist Party of America, because the Democrats and Republicans ain’t nothing but the same party with different names. Rusty came here to help spread the word and organise and recruit, because he could speak to the poor whites when a black man couldn’t.”

I nodded.

She shoved past me. “Now excuse e, Mr Callaghan, I got to go and wake up my daughters.”

I followed her out of the room and went on to the front room. Wendell still snored on the table. I picked up the bottle, set it safely out the way on a far corner. I found a bucket of water in a small kitchen off the main room, and some clothes. I could hear voices from the back of the house, confusion and complaint, and Bella Sorenson’s insistent voice telling her daughters to get the Hell out of bed and get dressed.

I lugged the bucket through to the front room, and poured half of it over Anson Wendell. He woke up with a roar, springing to his feet and falling over with a crash. He lay on the floor, blinking resentfully up at me. “The answer,” he mumbled vaguely, “Is in the chicken coop.” I let him have the other half of the bucket, and this brought him to his feet, roaring and cursing, his fists balled. I thought he was going to jump at me, by his wife strode through, and her harsh voice arrested him.

“Anson, git some dry clothes on. We’ve got to go. They coming for us, Mr Callaghan said, like we said they might. So git dressed.”

He shook his head in dazed confusion. She repeated her instructions, and he finally seemed to grasp them. He shambled off through to the back. Bella Sorenson stepped through to the kitchen and started rummaging in cupboards.

“Where does your husband keep his gun?” I asked.

“It’ll be out on the porch, by the door, most likely,” she snapped. I took the lamp and stepped outside.

There was a lot of clutter on what she called the porch – really the square of earth covered by the sheet where Wendell and I had sat that afternoon. I looked about, found the shotgun, broke it open. Like I had thought, it was empty. I went back inside.

“Shells?” I snapped. Bella Sorenson pointed to a shelf without a word, and I found a box of buck shot there. I crammed my pockets with them, and loaded the old double barrelled shotgun.

Bella Sorenson came through, carrying a bag. A daughter looked nervously through the door, saw me with the shotgun, and withdrew. Then all three were hustled through by Anson Wendell, who seemed sober now, and had changed into dry clothing. He carried an ancient revolver, open, and was slotting bullets into it.

I turned to Bella. “I’ve been thinking, and you can’t go to the Negro Settlement. You won’t be safe there. Maybe you know someone who has an outlying homestead where people won’t think to look for you.”

She frowned. “I got an idea where we’ll go. I figured ...”

I held up a hand. “I don’t need to know. Chances are I’ll be in more trouble than you by dawn, and I don’t want to put them on your trail. I can’t do that if I don’t know where you’re headed. Send word to Portia Gregory in the settlement once you’re out of the county and safe. Till then, it’s better I don’t know.”

She nodded. I stepped up to the door, opened it, and froze. I could hear the jingle of a horses bridle below us, on the path up from the river. I stepped back in, closing the door and blew out the lamp.

“Too late,” I hissed. “They’re here already, coming up from the river. Get out the back. Make for the scrub, and get well into it. If there are enough of them, they’ll try to get round the back.”

Bella Sorenson shook her head. “If they’re out there, we should stay here.”

I grabbed one of her daughter’s and started to drag her through tot he back of the house. “First thing they do will be to set this shack on fire. If you stay here, they’ll smoke you out like vermin, and shoot you as you come out. Only chance you’ll have is to go, now, before they get around the back. I’ll give them something to think about at the front, but I can’t buy you much time. So you need to go now, otherwise you’ll all die here.”

“Listen to him, Bella,” said Anson, quietly, but clearly. “These are evil men. They didn’t hesitate to kill Mains, they’ll shoot us like rabbits.”

Bella Sorenson didn’t waste another moment. Driving her daughters before her, she moved them through to the back of the house.